Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Feb;3(2):173-182. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0506-1. Epub 2019 Jan 14.
The widespread use of digital technologies by young people has spurred speculation that their regular use negatively impacts psychological well-being. Current empirical evidence supporting this idea is largely based on secondary analyses of large-scale social datasets. Though these datasets provide a valuable resource for highly powered investigations, their many variables and observations are often explored with an analytical flexibility that marks small effects as statistically significant, thereby leading to potential false positives and conflicting results. Here we address these methodological challenges by applying specification curve analysis (SCA) across three large-scale social datasets (total n = 355,358) to rigorously examine correlational evidence for the effects of digital technology on adolescents. The association we find between digital technology use and adolescent well-being is negative but small, explaining at most 0.4% of the variation in well-being. Taking the broader context of the data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change.
年轻人广泛使用数字技术促使人们猜测，他们的常规使用会对心理健康产生负面影响。目前支持这一观点的经验证据主要基于对大型社交数据集的二次分析。尽管这些数据集为高影响力的调查提供了宝贵的资源，但它们的许多变量和观察结果通常是以分析灵活性进行探索的，这会使小效应在统计学上变得显著，从而导致潜在的假阳性和相互矛盾的结果。在这里，我们通过在三个大型社交数据集（总样本量为 355358 人）上应用规范曲线分析（SCA）来解决这些方法学挑战，严格检验数字技术对青少年影响的相关证据。我们发现数字技术使用与青少年幸福感之间的关联是负面的，但很小，最多只能解释幸福感变化的 0.4%。考虑到数据的更广泛背景，这些影响太小，不值得改变政策。
